The United Kingdom (UK) Home Office has released new experimental data on the routes individuals used to travel to the UK before claiming asylum in 2024.
This release uses internally matched immigration system data, relating to asylum seekers’ method of arrival. The data is provisional and taken from live operational systems. These are ‘Official Statistics in Development’ and the estimates may be revised as further work on the analysis develops. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 500.
The Home Office routinely publishes data on the immigration system, including asylum claims, in the Immigration System Statistics quarterly release. The internally matched data in this release may differ from some of the figures in the Immigration System Statistics release due to its provisional nature and the information being extracted from a live database.
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Immigration
Immigration People Dibersity Asylum Concept
How many people come to the UK?
In total, 3.1 million visas were granted in 2024, allowing individuals to come to the UK to visit, work, study or join family members. This figure will exclude the large numbers of visitors who do not require a visa or ETA to travel to the UK. There have also been 1.1 million ETAs granted to visitors between the launch of the scheme (October 2023) and the end of 2024.
In 2024, 43,600 people came to the UK via irregular means. This number is for detected arrivals and so excludes any individuals who entered the country via irregular means and remained undetected.
For more statistics on regular and irregular migration to the UK, see the Immigration System Statistics, year ending December 2024.
How do asylum seekers travel to the UK?
Asylum seekers use a variety of routes to travel to the UK before claiming asylum, including:
- legal visa routes, that is, with valid leave to enter
- regular routes using fraudulent documents
- clandestine (irregular) entry, such as on small boats, lorries or shipping containers
- through the Common Travel Area without valid permission to enter
As noted in the Home Office Immigration System Statistics, some asylum seekers claim asylum immediately upon arrival to the UK, while others may have been present in the UK some time prior to making an asylum claim. Some arrivals on legal visa routes may find during or at the end of their leave that they are unable, or unwilling, to return to their country of origin and therefore claim asylum in the UK.
The published statistics report that in 2023, around 30% of the 92,000 asylum claims in that year were from individuals who arrived in the UK on a small boat (28,000 people). The statistics also showed, using internally matched data, that around 20% of people claiming asylum in 2023 held a valid visa within the 7 days prior to the lodging of an asylum claim. Other claimants may have also arrived on a legal visa the validity of which expired more than 7 days before their claim.
This analysis has been adapted further, and new estimates for 2024 are now available.
The Immigration System Statistics, year ending December 2024 release shows that of the 108,000 people claiming asylum in 2024, just under a third (35,000) had arrived on a small boat without a permission to enter. Internally matched data shows that slightly more than a third (40,000) had travelled to the UK on a visa.
Of these 40,000 asylum claims in 2024 from people who had held a visa:
- 40% (16,000) had a study visa
- 29% (11,500) had a work visa
- 24% (9,500) had a visitor visa
- the remaining 7% had other forms of leave.
Almost 10,000 people who claimed asylum after having entered on a visa were provided with asylum support in the form of accommodation at some point during 2024. This number rises to over 25,000 when considering claims lodged between 2022 and 2024, inclusive.
Of those asylum seekers who had originally entered on a visa and are currently in supported accommodation (regardless of year of claim), the most common nationalities were Pakistan, Nigeria & Sri Lanka.